"Dear, if you knew what tears they shed,
Who live apart from home and friend,
To pass my house, by pity led,
Your steps would tend."
He makes the acquaintance of the latter very shortly. But requires no
spoon to sup with her, as Miss Majendie's invitations to supper, or
indeed to luncheon, breakfast or dinner, are so few and rare that it
might be rash for a hungry man to count on them.
The professor, who has felt it to be his duty to call on his ward
regularly every week, has learned to know and (I regret to say) to
loathe that estimable spinster christened Jane Majendie.
After every visit to her house he has sworn to himself that "_this one_"
shall be his last, and every Wednesday following he has gone again.
Indeed, to-day being Wednesday in the heart of June, he may be seen
sitting bolt upright in a hansom on his way to the unlovely house that
holds Miss Jane Majendie.
As he enters the dismal drawing-room, where he finds Miss Majendie and
her niece, it becomes plain, even to his inexperienced brain, that there
has just been a row on somewhere.
Perpetua is sitting on a distant lounge, her small vivacious face one
thunder-cloud. Miss Majendie, sitting on the hardest chair this hideous
room contains, is smiling. A terrible sign. The professor pales before
it.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Curzon," says Miss Majendie, rising and
extending a bony hand. "As Perpetua's guardian, you may perhaps have
some influence over her. I say 'perhaps' advisedly, as I scarcely dare
to hope _anyone_ could influence a mind so distorted as hers."
"What is it?" asks the professor nervously--of Perpetua, not of Miss
Majendie.
"I'm dull," says Perpetua sullenly.
The professor glances keenly at the girl's downcast face, and then at
Miss Majendie. The latter glance is a question.
"You hear her," says Miss Majendie coldly--she draws her shawl round her
meagre shoulders, and a breath through her lean nostrils that may be
heard. "Perhaps _you_ may be able to discover her meaning."
"What is it?" asks the professor, turning to the girl, his tone anxious,
uncertain. Young women with "wrongs" are unknown to him, as are all
other sorts of young women for the matter of that. And _this_ particular
young woman looks a little unsafe at the present moment.
"I have told you! I am tired of this life. I am dull--stupid. I want to
go out." Her lovely eyes are flashing, her face is white--her lips
trembling. "_Take_ me out," says she suddenly.
"Perpetua!" exclaims Miss Majendie. "How unmaidenly! How immodest!"
Perpetua looks at her with large, surprised eyes.
"Why?" says she.
"I really think," interrupts the professor hurriedly, who sees breakers
ahead, "if I were to take Perpetua for a walk--a drive--to--er--to some
place or other--it might destroy this _ennui_ of which she complains. If
you will allow her to come out with me for an hour or so, I----"
"If you are waiting for _my_ sanction, Mr. Curzon, to that extraordinary
proposal, you will wait some time," says Miss Majendie slowly, frigidly.
She draws the shawl still closer, and sniffs again.
"But----"
"There is no 'But,' sir. The subject doesn't admit of argument. In my
young days, and I should think"--scrutinizing him exhaustively through
her glasses--"_in yours_, it was not customary for a young _gentlewoman_
to go out walking, alone, with '_a man_'!!" If she had said with a
famished tiger, she couldn't have thrown more horror into her tone.
The professor had shrunk a little from that classing of her age with
his, but has now found matter for hope in it.
"Still--my age--as you suggest--so far exceeds Perpetua's--I am indeed
so much older than she is, that I might be allowed to escort her
wherever it might please her to go."
"The _real_ age of a man now-a-days, sir, is a thing impossible to
know," says Miss Majendie. "You wear glasses--a capital disguise! I mean
nothing offensive--_so far_--sir, but it behoves me to be careful, and
behind those glasses, who can tell what demon lurks? Nay! No offence! An
_innocent_ man would _feel_ no offence!"
"Really, Miss Majendie!" begins the poor professor, who is as red as
though he were the guiltiest soul alive.
"Let me proceed, sir. We were talking of the ages of men."
_"We?"_
"Certainly! It was you who suggested the idea, that, being so much older
than my niece, Miss Wynter, you could therefore escort her here and
there--in fact _everywhere_--in fact"--with awful meaning--"_any_
where!"
"I assure you, madam," begins the professor, springing to his
feet--Perpetua puts out a white hand.
"Ah! let her talk," says she. "_Then_ you will understand."
"But men's ages, sir, are a snare and a delusion!" continues Miss
Majendie, who has mounted her hobby, and will ride it to the death. "Who
can tell the age of any man in this degenerate age? We look at their
faces, and say _he_ must be so and so, and _he_ a few years younger, but
looks are vain, they tell us nothing. Some look old, because they _are_
old, some look old--through _vice_!"
The professor makes an impatient gesture. But Miss Majendie is equal to
most things.
"'Who excuses himself _accuses_ himself,'" quotes she with terrible
readiness. "Why that gesture, Mr. Curzon? I made no mention of _your_
name. And, indeed, I trust your age would place you outside of any such
suspicion, still, I am bound to be careful where my niece's interests
are concerned. You, as her guardian, if a _faithful_ guardian" (with
open doubt, as to this, expressed in eye and pointed finger), "should be
the first to applaud my caution."
"You take an extreme view," begins the professor, a little feebly,
perhaps. That eye and that pointed finger have cowed him.
"One's views _have_ to be extreme in these days if one would continue in
the paths of virtue," said Miss Majendie. "_Your_ views," with a
piercing and condemnatory glance, "are evidently _not_ extreme. One word
for all, Mr. Curzon, and this argument is at an end. I shall not permit
my niece, with my permission, to walk with you or any other man whilst
under my protection."
"I daresay you are right--no doubt--no doubt," mumbles the professor,
incoherently, now thoroughly frightened and demoralized. Good heavens!
What an awful old woman! And to think that this poor child is under her
care. He happens at this moment to look at the poor child, and the scorn
_for him_ that gleams in her large eyes perfects his rout. To say that
she was _right_!
"If Perpetua wishes to go for a walk," says Miss Majendie, breaking
through a mist of angry feeling that is only half on the surface, "I am
here to accompany her."
"I don't want to go for a walk--with you," says Perpetua, rudely it must
be confessed, though her tone is low and studiously reserved. "I don't
want to go for a walk _at all_." She pauses, and her voice chokes a
little, and then suddenly she breaks into a small passion of vehemence.
"I want to go somewhere, to _see_ something," she cries, gazing
imploringly at Curzon.
"To _see_ something!" says her aunt, "why it was only last Sunday I took
you to Westminster Abbey, where you saw the grandest edifice in all the
world."
"Most interesting place," says the professor, _sotto voce_, with a wild
but mad hope of smoothing matters down for Perpetua's sake.
If it _was_ for Perpetua's sake, she proves herself singularly
ungrateful. She turns upon him a small vivid face, alight with
indignation.
"You support her," cries she. "_You!_ Well, I shall tell you!
I"--defiantly--"I don't want to go to churches at all. I want to go to
_theatres_! There!"
There is an awful silence. Miss Majendie's face is a picture! If the
girl had said she wanted to go to the devil instead of to the theatre,
she could hardly have looked more horrified. She takes a step forward,
closer to Perpetua.
"Go to your room! And pray--_pray_ for a purer mind!" says she. "This is
hereditary, all this! Only prayer can cast it out. And remember, this is
the last word upon this subject. As long as you are under _my_ roof you
shall never go to a sinful place of amusement. I forbid you ever to
speak of theatres again."
"I shall not be forbidden!" says Perpetua. She confronts her aunt with
flaming eyes and crimson cheeks. "I _do_ want to go to the theatre, and
to balls, and dances, and _everything_. I"--passionately, and with a
most cruel, despairing longing in her young voice, "want to dance, to
laugh, to sing, to amuse myself--to be the gayest thing in all the
world!"
She stops as if exhausted, surprised perhaps at her own daring, and
there is silence for a moment, a _little_ moment, and then Miss Majendie
looks at her.
"'The gayest thing in all the world:' _and your father only four months
dead_!" says she, slowly, remorselessly.
All in a moment, as it were, the little crimson angry face grows
white--white as death itself. The professor, shocked beyond words,
stands staring, and marking the sad changes in it. Perpetua is trembling
from head to foot. A frightened look has come into her beautiful
eyes--her breath comes quickly. She is as a thing at bay--hopeless,
horrified. Her lips part as if she would say something. But no words
come. She casts one anguished glance at the professor, and rushes from
the room.
It was but a momentary glimpse into a heart, but it was terrible. The
professor turns upon Miss Majendie in great wrath.
"That was cruel--uncalled for!" says he, a strange feeling in his heart
that he has not time to stop and analyze _then_. "How could you hurt her
so? Poor child! Poor girl! She _loved_ him!"
"Then let her show respect to his memory," says Miss Majendie
vindictively. She is unmoved--undaunted.
"She was not wanting in respect." His tone is hurried. This woman with
the remorseless eye is too much for the gentle professor. "All she
_does_ want is change, amusement. She is young. Youth must enjoy."
"In moderation--and in proper ways," says Miss Majendie stonily. "In
moderation," she repeats mechanically, almost unconsciously. And then
suddenly her wrath gets the better of her, and she breaks out into a
violent range. That one should dare to question _her_ actions! "Who are
_you_?" demands she fiercely, "that you should presume to dictate right
and wrong to _me_."
"I am Miss Wynter's guardian," says the professor, who begins to see
visions--and all the lower regions let loose at once. Could an original
Fury look more horrible than this old woman, with her grey nodding head,
and blind vindictive passion. He hears his voice faltering, and knows
that he is edging towards the door. After all, what can the bravest man
do with an angry old woman, except to get away from her as quickly as
possible? And the professor, though brave enough in the usual ways, is
not brave where women are concerned.
"Guardian or no guardian, I will thank you to remember you are in _my_
house!" cries Miss Majendie, in a shrill tone that runs through the
professor's head.
"Certainly. Certainly," says he, confusedly, and then he slips out of
the room, and having felt the door close behind him, runs tumultuously
down the staircase. For years he has not gone down any staircase so
swiftly. A vague, if unacknowledged, feeling that he is literally making
his escape from a vital danger, is lending wings to his feet. Before him
lies the hall-door, and that way safety lies, safety from that old
gaunt, irate figure upstairs. He is not allowed to reach, however--just
yet.
A door on the right side of the hall is opened cautiously; a shapely
little head is as cautiously pushed through it, and two anxious red lips
whisper:--
"Mr. Curzon," first, and then, as he turns in answer to the whisper,
"Sh--_Sh_!"